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Leftist declared official winner of Ecuador presidential vote
AFP
QUITO
Petroleumworld.com 11 29 06Ecuador's Rafael Correa, the latest in a growing string of left-leaning leaders in Latin America, was officially declared the winner of the country's presidential vote on Tuesday.
Correa, a friend of Venezuela's fiercely anti-American President Hugo Chavez, earned 57.9 percent of the votes against conservative tycoon Alvaro Noboa's 42.1 percent, with 90.1 percent of the votes tallied, according to an official count by the country's Supreme Electoral Tribunal.
His election marked another blow to Washington's hope to retain its level of its influence in the region, and came on the heels of the electoral comeback in Nicaragua of US Cold War foe Daniel Ortega.
On Monday, Correa said he would seek stronger ties with Venezuela, oppose a free-trade deal with the United States, and not renew the lease for a US military air base on Ecuador's Pacific Coast.
"We respect international treaties, but in 2009, when the Manta agreement expires, we will not renew it," Correa said, adding that the military base would be converted into an international airport.
In Venezuela, President Hugo Chavez hailed Correa's victory.
"I salute the new president of the brotherly republic of Ecuador with patriotic jubilation," he said, while his ambassador in Quito welcomed what he said was the election of another Venezuelan ally.
At the same time, the US ambassador in Quito, Linda Jewell, telephoned Correa, to congratulate him on his apparent victory, stressing "the long and deep friendship that links the two countries."
On celebrating his triumph Monday, Correa called out, "until victory always" -- the slogan of late iconic revolutionary leader Ernesto "Che" Guevara -- to cheers from thousands of supporters.
He announced that Ecuador, which produces more than 540,000 barrels of crude a day, would apply to rejoin the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, which it quit in 1992.
Correa has made financial markets uneasy with his calls to revise foreign oil companies' contracts in Ecuador, renegotiate the nation's foreign debt and expel the World Bank representative.
His friendship with Chavez and his determination not to renew the lease for the US military base near Manta have caused concern in Washington.
"It would be wonderful to move closer to a country like Venezuela, which can help us a lot because it has 53 billion dollars in cash reserves as a result of the oil surplus," he said.
A former finance minister who describes himself as a "humanist, leftist Christian," Correa says he is a representative of the "new Latin American left."
Leftist leaders, some more moderate than others, govern in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Cuba, Uruguay, as well as Nicaragua and Venezuela, where Chavez looks certain of winning re-election on Sunday after eight years in office.
Correa's election dashed Washington's hopes that Ecuador would join Colombia and Mexico in electing conservative presidents, helping counterbalance the regional influence of Chavez and Bolivia's Evo Morales, said Vladimir Sierra, a political analyst at the Quito Catholic University.
In Washington, US State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said the election in Ecuador appeared to have been "pretty transparent, free and fair."
AFP 28 2051 GMT 11 06
Copyright© 2001 AFP. All Rights Reserved.
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